The Art of the Northern Renaissance

This book evokes the art of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Northern Europe in all its richness and splendor. The works of Van Eyck, Bosch, Bruegel, Durer, and other masters are considered within the larger context of a changing society in which church and state, Protestant and Catholic, man and woman, artist and patron, independent mercantile city and noble chivalric court all played a part. Craig Harbison considers these and many other facets of the Renaissance world, drawing them together into a unified narrative that illuminates the complexity and brilliance of the art and its times.

Craig Harbison is Professor Emeritus of art history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Jan van Eyck, The Play of Realism.